Men who kill

about 4 years ago

This article at Gawker has me fiercely pissed off! I am so fucking sick of hearing the tired, pathetic, profoundly sexist story about how men don’t kill, men aren’t mass murderers, men are such kind, gentle, loving spirits and it’s the big bad matriarchy and all the mean women who are responsible for all the horror and violence in the world.

Go fuck yourself Gawker, and every shitty commenter who agreed that it’s only women who lose their minds and carry out despicable acts of cowardice against other humans.

All killed by men. And not just any man: daddy fucking dearest. The only real difference between women and men who commit mass murder is that men prefer victims who can’t fight back. They prefer to stab, beat, shoot, burn, strangle, cut the throats of babies, toddlers and children. Often prompted by sheer cruelty, vindictiveness and selfishness.

So enough with this crap about women, toxic femininity and matriarchy causing mass murder.

Here’s the Gawker article, written for men.

MEN WHO KILL

From what I know about the man who killed three of him four children on August 19th, he was angry because he felt his son deserved more attention than his daughters. This man reminds me of many other men who kill their children – the most common form of mass murder when men are the killers —off the top of my head I can think of at least five mass murders where the killer was stressed out, embarking on a sexual relationship with woman not the mother of his children, which his children were making difficult, frustrated by disabled children or simply because he wanted to hurt his wife. Ending the lives ofchildren essentially because the men didn’t feel like they were getting what they deserve. Entitlement.

Gynocentrism does all of us dirty in varying ways. This includes men. We live in a society that often does a piss-poor job at teaching men that children are not their own personal property and that men are not entitled by birth to a life of comfort and ease. It does an even worse job at teaching men how to handle adult responsibility. Even tiny moments of frustration are enough to create lethal conditions. And it is other people, often children, who bear the brunt of that.

I do not suggest, of course, that all men lack these skills, but I am suggesting that many do, and that it manifests itself in various, troublesome ways. It seems to me that we must do a better job of teaching our children, especially our sons, that your ego does not own you and the world does not owe you. That a woman has the right to not be interested. That you might get fired. That your ex-wife might meet someone else. That your ego may not only bruise but shatter, and you will be okay. That it is not anyone’s job to protect it, only your job to make sure it is durable. Your job is to practice humility.

Of course, these deaths cannot in any way be blamed entirely on ego. People like Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, Brittany Pilkington, Allyson McConnell and Tania Clarence have other serious mental ailments besides outrageous entitlement. And I realize that this is a very binary heteronormative frame.

But that is the frame that many of us are trapped under. I think about the women who are treated as cash-machine dispensers by vindictive ex-husbands, the women falsely accused of sexual assault and rape, kicked out of school based on false allegations, others who’ve been abused by partners for what are perceived to be even slight dismissals. I think about the number of arrests, assaults, and even murders that have happened because someone in stilettos felt quote unquote disrespected.

I think about how early in life women are conditioned to provide for men and protect them,even at the expense of their own lives, and how women are taught the importance of soothing, wrangling, and navigating the male ego. #HeForShe, not #WeForAll. And while that has its own downsides; it did arm me with some tools I’m glad I have now. I just wish it went both ways.

So yes, family law reform, reproductive rights for women, shared parenting and yes, treatment for men’s mental illness. But this also bears addressing.

I focus on men specifically because it is men who are more likely to do things like Yates and McConnell did. Forget pedophiles or strangers on the street or random kidnappers. It’s the bruised ego of men that’s responsible for the overwhelming majority of child murders. It’s men’s sense of entitlement to a life of ease, in which children are their personal possessions, to be disposed of at will. Adulthood comes with responsibilities, and children are never accountable for the problems adults have. You never kill a child.

Let us not forget that while we’re teaching our boys to be independent and strong, we must teach them this too.

[Ed. note: this post originally appeared at JudgBitch.com and is reprinted here with permission.]